Uconn

STORRS — Kevin Ollie spent part of the wee hours Wednesday morning sitting on a bus back to the UConn campus from New York and contemplating a change to his starting lineup. Contemplation might be trumped by injury.

UConn forward DeAndre Daniels experienced back spasms during Tuesday night's loss to North Carolina State. He might be limited or not play at all tonight when Harvard visits Gampel Pavilion. It's a ready-made reason for Ollie to put center Enosch Wolf into the starting lineup.

Wolf tallied 12 points and nine rebounds against the Wolfpack, easily the best game of his career. Granted, the sample size is not large. Still, Wolf was huge (pun intended) for the Huskies and might reap some reward for that. Ollie wanted to wait to see how Daniels' back responded in practice Friday to make any decision, but don't be surprised if the 7-foot-1 Wolf garners the first start of his career.

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"If he keeps doing what he's doing, he's going to get more playing time, let's put it that way," Ollie said. "Starters are the guys I like. The guys on the court at the end of the game are the guys I trust. I look at them all as starters.

"I'm not expecting 12 and nine from him every night. That would be asking a lot, but we see he's capable of doing it."

There are so many ways Ollie could go. Daniels could be fine and Ollie might decide to go with his usual starting lineup of Daniels, Shabazz Napier, Ryan Boatright, Omar Calhoun and Tyler Olander. Or Ollie could opt for Niels Giffey over Wolf.

Harvard (4-3), fresh off an easy victory against Boston College, its fifth straight against the not-quite-what-they-used-to-be Eagles, isn't a big team. That usually calls for a smaller lineup to equalize matchups.

Whatever the case, Wolf was good enough against N.C. State — and against Wake Forest a couple of weeks ago — to no longer be ignored.

Giffey, a fellow German, even put some playful pressure on Wolf.

"We know what he can do now, and we expect it," Giffey said. "He can't hide from us."

The thought of a guy Wolf's size hiding would be comical if it weren't for the fact that Wolf was hardly noticed during his first two years with the program. His scoring Tuesday night was certainly necessary — Boatright and Napier have carried that load exclusively through eight games — but it was the rebounding that helped more than anything.

The Huskies have still been outrebounded seven times. While the much bigger Wolfpack held a narrow edge in that department, the Huskies know a better effort on the boards might have resulted in a victory. The Huskies' two leading rebounders are Daniels and Olander, both averaging a rather mundane 4.5 rebounds per game. Ollie has stressed rebounding from the start.

More importantly, he's been stressing that rebounding doesn't have nearly as much to do with size as it does mostly with desire. It is, in Giffey's estimation, 70 percent desire and 30 percent technique. Ollie need only point to his director of basketball administration, former Husky Kevin Freeman, for evidence of that.

Freeman was listed at 6-7, is closer to 6-5, yet still managed to rip down 913 rebounds in his career.

UConn has shown it will play hard all the time. It has shown it will play unevenly, too, but it hasn't shown that it can make itself into at least a decent rebounding team, among other concerns Ollie has.

"Our assist-to-turnover ratio is one-to-one," Ollie said. "That's not going to get it done in the Big East and we all know that. Shooting 42 percent is not going to get it done in the Big East. We have to raise that up, we have to get better shots, we have to rebound better.

"There's a lot we need to do better. We'll keep working. We'll get it."

When: 7 p.m.

Where: Gampel Pavilion, Storrs

TV, Radio: SNY, WTIC-AM (1080)

Records: UConn 6-2; Harvard 4-3

Series: UConn leads, 15-2. The last defeat came on Dec. 22, 1972, in Storrs.

Worth noting: UConn forward DeAndre Daniels may miss the game or be limited because of back spasms that struck him during Tuesday night's loss to North Carolina State ... The teams have one common opponent in Vermont. UConn beat the Catamounts at home while Harvard lost to them at home ... Harvard is 6-39 all-time against Big East foes ... It is UConn's last game before a 10-day break for final exams ... The Crimson lost its two returning leading scorers to an academic scandal in September ... UConn toppled the Crimson, 67-53, in the last meeting Dec. 8, 2011 ... Harvard was 26-5 last year and made its first NCAA Tournament appearance in 66 years ... Harvard coach Tommy Amaker is 0-3 against the Huskies in his six years at the school. Amaker formerly coached in the Big East at Seton Hall before moving on to Michigan ... Harvard was a preseason No. 2 pick in the Ivy League, behind Princeton ... The Huskies have won 39 consecutive nonconference games at Gampel Pavilion.

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